All I need is a Whisper
by Ambivalent Anonymous
Summary: Based of 4x07 (AU where the nail in his brain was much more serious). After sustaining a serious head injury, Jesus isn't fine, and the recovery will be rigorous. Now, the Adams-Foster family will have to deal with coming together as one, all while splintering with their own stresses. With tensions high, will the clan persevere?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is my first Fosters fanfiction :) I love this show so much, and my favorite character is Jesus. There seems to be so few fics written about him, and after last week's episode, I just couldn't get this idea out of my head! I hope you enjoy, and please leave a review. The title is based off of the song 'Whispers' by Passenger**

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Mariana Adams-Foster liked to think herself as a rather collected individual, thank you. She could (usually) juggle the stresses of out smarting everyone in her grade level, undying friendship drama, and whatever crisis of the week happened to be unfolding with her family, all without getting a hair out of place and while maintaining that glistening smile that alerted others to just how "fine" she was.

But when you're not-boyfriend who snuck into your house with death lolling at the tip of his tattered soul awaited his freedom solely to fulfill his love laced delusions of _you,_ and then your STEAM partner has the audacity to test your patience with her recklessness, you're bound to get a little cranky.

So when her moms called her in for a family meeting, interrupting the very few moments she had to get things done, her temperament was already at a steady boil before she even reached the bottom of the stairs.

Huffing in poorly concealed annoyance (not that she was putting much of an effort into hiding it. She had WORK TO DO. Worse, she knew that they knew- being the leader of a prestigious club was no easy feat, after all, and humbleness was never one of her strengths- that she had work to do), she plopped down on the couch, nervously bobbing her leg up and down.

 _Keep it together, Mariana,_ she told herself, using the fact that the less she said at this stupid meeting, the less time she spent on this stupid couch and the sooner she could return to working on her non-stupid robot as her sole anchor to sanity.

"We're selling the house."

So much for that plan, then.

The reaction of her family was instant.

"What?! Why?!" She cried, a million possibilities gnawing on the tendons of her mind. Off to side she heard Jesus argue with Brandon, but she zoned him out, lost in the own suffocating state of rage.

And then Stef was asking about his headache, and red filtered through her vision. Here they were, surely staring homelessness and poverty right in the face, and somehow, they had managed to turn the focus onto something as trivial and meaningless as a headache.

"He's fine!" She snapped, pushing her own throbbing pain away. "Are we going to be homeless? Oh god, I'm not going to get into a good school."

She was working herself into a panic, desperation rising and spilling over like a study gush of lava burning any and all reason her moms were trying to tell her in its wake.

"Will we still go to Anchor beach? We're going to live in an apartment?" The questions tumbling out, each more frantic then the last.

Lena was doing her best to calm her down, answering each inquiry with a calmness only she could manage. Somewhere in the background, Brandon was talking- or rather, arguing (what's new?) with Stef, and then he was scooping Mason up in his arms, exiting the house in a swift display of dramatics.

Mariana pinched the bridge of her nose, the pulsing ache rearing its ugly head back into the front of her thoughts once more. Great, now she could add ADHD pill side effects to her frequently growing list of stresses.

Out of her periphery, Jesus was standing up. _Good_. _He's leaving. I can't deal with him right now._ She spat internally, bitterness clouding her every movement.

Turning back to Lena, she opened her mouth once more, five more questions already forming at the tip of tongue when suddenly-

"JESUS!"

She had turned around just in time to see her brother crumple to ground in a boneless heap, earning a collective gasp from everyone in the room.

The next few moments were a flutter of heart crushing fear. Utmost terror gripped her every breath, clutching at her soul with the suffocating force of hopelessness. Within the hollow of her rib cage, she could all but feel the agonizing transition of her steady heartbeat forging itself into a mad, beastly pounding. It throbbed and ached and tensed all at once, stuttering with every other beat over the horrid sight that lied before her.

Jeśus, a being relentlessly shadowed by an aura of nervous energy and ruthlessly dictated by an undying hyperness, lied as still as the warm air outside. Had it not been for the slow uprising and deflation of his chest, she might have assumed the worst and collapsed under the weight of her own despair. But as it stood, he was indeed still breathing, and, as perhaps as part of her rite of passage into being a twin, so was she.

Each second crawled along as if covered in molasses, the ticking of the clock a cruel taunting to her already weakened resolve. With a wobble in her knees, she stumbled to the ground, choppy and crisp, a mockery to the way her poor brother had fallen like a stringless puppet, and reached for his hand.

She clutched it with all the strength and desperation one could muster, pleading for him to squeeze back.

His hand remained limp and lifeless underneath her grasp.

Tears, like little soldiers holding what remained of her happiness captive, threatened to spill over, but she refused to let them. She would not, could not, break down right now. The mere thought of showing such a weakness, of daring to drawn in the attention of others, when her own brother, her best friend and protector, suffered on a cold hard ground beneath her, sent waves of queasiness throughout her every nerve.

However, before she even had time to scold herself for such little self control, paramedics were piling in, and suddenly her brother was being lifted away.

Away from her.

And then just like that, the solid cement of a confident and self assured teenager shattered, leaving in its place a small child, scared and broken and completely alone except for brother. Numerous hands held her back as she thrashed and twisted in a crazed dash to reach him. She was a wild creature, yelling for him in an ineligible hodge podge of words, each step taken by paramedics further away from her serving as shock of electricity zapping through her veins, each more excruciating then the last.

Finally, when she could see him no more, and the ambulance was rushing away, her fight fizzled. The vice like grip of hands imprisoning her loosened and forged into soothing pats as she whimpered, yearning so desperately to be by her brother's side.

"Mariana, darling, get up, we're going to follow the ambulance." She didn't register who said it, already too deeply embedded in and deafened by her thoughts of despair. Still, she somehow managed to nod her head numbly, and let herself be guided up off the ground and into the car.

With her head pressed against the cool glass, eyes half heartedly licking up the blurring images flashing outside the car window, she succumbed herself to silence, not even offering so much as a gesture in anyone else's direction.

For her anchor had been severed, and now she was washed away in the seas of fear.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: hey! Here's chapter two! Thank you so so much, to everyone who reviewed, favorited, or put this story of their alerts, as well as to everyone who just read it. It truly means so much to me :) I hope you enjoy the new chapter. Anything italicized is a flashback in case you couldn't tell**

" _Mariana, Mariana, don't worry. He's going to be fine. Sweetie, look at me. It's going to be alright." Stef soothed, petting her hair in a calming notion. She hadn't let go of her mom once since she had rushed into her arms at the scene of the wreck, fearing if she did, the overwhelming emotions would be too much to bear and she would simply crash._

 _After being checked over by paramedics in the ambulance, it had been decided that, medically, she was fine._

 _The same could not be said for Jesus._

 _The burning image of his wrecked and bloodied body being carried away on a stretcher was seared in her mind. It was a sight she surely would never forget, because, for those few, horrible moments before they found and announced his puls_ e, she had truly believed she was witnessing her brother's dead body be taken away to places she could never follow.

 _But he was alive, as each of her family members, all visibly shaken, had reminded her at least half a dozen times. The doctor had assured them as much as that, along with confirmation that he'd make a full recovery._

 _Still, she just couldn't shed the horrors of that image from her hollowed soul. And it was for that reason, that the entire clan stood anxiously behind her, some bouncing from foot to foot, or biting on their cuticles, as they waited for her to open the door to the room he lied unconscious in._

 _Yet, try as she might, she simply couldn't bring herself to open it, a concoction of the way her hand trembled like a leaf in the autumn breeze and her internal, paralyzing fears._

 _Stef placed one hand on hers, the other still gently stroking her frizzled hair, murmuring sweet nothings and reassurances._

 _"Mariana," she whispered in a hushed tone so that no one else could hear but them. "You need to trust us. I know you're scared, but he's going to be fine, and he needs you right now. You've been so, so brave today, and you're going to need to be brave for just a little bit longer. Do you think you can do that, sweet girl?"_

 _Mariana nodded acutely, not trusting the strength of her voice to remain unhitched, and leaned on her mother, as if she could somehow derive her ability to so effortlessly compartmentalize from physical contact alone._

 _And maybe, in some ways, she could, for it was only at that moment that she could force her hand to twist the knob and brace herself for whatever sig_ ht might assault mere steps away.

One step.

Present Day:

Mariana yearned for solitude. The continuous concerns voiced aloud by her family's pestering were maddening. With every "he'll be alright," hurdled her way, sharp and icy like a bullet penetrating her very soul with its sheer falseness, the urge to lash out at them sprung forward like bile.

Because he was not alright, and the possibility of him never being fine again loomed mere rooms away from where she sat, intermingled with the ticking taunts of time as they all anxiously awaited his revival to the land of the conscious. The wait was pure, utter torture, the not knowing and uncertainty a cruelty worse than any clear cut diagnosis from his doctor. At least with the latter, she'd have the time to come to terms with, no matter how dire, his condition, and would thus be adequately equipped with how to approach the matter.

But alas, suffering knew no bounds, because Jeśus had a freaking nail in his head, and all she had to wrestle with was an entire realm full of possibilities. Her ignorance was a darkness, eternal and looming, a force itching up the tendons of reassurances that held her together and consuming her from the inside out until each thought rattled away into oblivion.

However, just as quickly as she had fallen into this pit, she was yanked out by the tug of the doctor's reappearance.

"Mrs. Foster?" He called, glancing down at his clipboard, a habitual practice more so than for any significant reason.

Stef and Lena rose as one, united and linked by the intertwining of their hands as much as by the maternal fears surrounding them. Together they nervously shuffled towards the doctor, Callie, Jude, and Brandon trailing closely behind. She, however, remained sitting without so much as an indication that she intended to follow, afraid that the jelly-like state of her legs wouldn't support her if she tried to stand.

"You're son is out of surgery, we're moving him to the recovery ward now," the doctor monotoned in a slight resemblance of pity. "We won't know if there's any damage until after he wakes up, but I'm fairly optimistic the results will be satisfying. You can come in and see him now, he should be waking in thirty minutes to an hour." With a smile, short and awkward, the doctor spun around and disappeared into the seemingly endless corridors.

"Mariana, honey, come on, you can come see him now," Lena beckoned for her to follow the rest of them, who had already started their awkward shuffle ahead, each lost in the cold isolation of their own thoughts and fears.

Mariana did not budge, the knowledge of her destination far too strong a barrier for her to break. Seeing Jesus lying motionless, strapped to tubes and wires, would just make this horrible nightmare real, a monstrous reality that could not simply we wisped away by a self preserved ignorance, or ignored with the turn of a head. If she just stayed here though, she kept repeating to herself like a record player hitched on the same mantra, then she could still pretend as if everything were normal, as if Jesus was just away at boarding school again, instead of wrestling with such a vicious fate.

Ignorance was all at once the shield protecting her from all of life's evils, and the knife draining her resolve drip by drip.

"Mariana..."

Beneath the veil of tears blurring her vision, she had not seen Lena approach her. She rubbed vigorously at her eyes, refusing to let anyone see her cry, before glancing up.

Lena was crouched in front of her, concern transparent beneath her loving gaze. It was at that moment, upon seeing the same piercing pain she was feeling reflected in her mother's eyes, that she knew she had to get up, to put her own crippling fears aside and be there for her brother, and with a nod, the two solidified an unspoken agreement of silent suffering and support, alas giving her the strength she so desperately relied on to stand.

The long walk towards his room felt as if she were prowling on thinning ice. Each step forward brought with it the splintering and cracking of her frozen exterior and threatened to finally shatter, submerging her into the bitter death grip of hopelessness.

By the time they had finally reached the door, the sole barrier between herself and her brother, she was shivering with distraught, the sheer thought of what awaited her on the other side enough to paralyze her on the spot.

But life was not going to just wait for her to align her emotions, and before she really had time to even reconsider her decision to abandon the safety of the waiting room, Stef was entering full force with the grace of one who radiated bravery.

The barrier was demolished. All she had to do now was step forward.

One step.

Oh. God.

It took every ounce of willpower she could muster to now throw up on the spot.

Because he looked dead, like they had dragged some pale corpse wearing her brother's face fresh out of the morgue and plopped it on a bed in some sort of sick mockery of life.

But it was him. Hooked up to all those monitors with a pained grimace painted across his slacken face.

The wrongness of it all rattled her to her very core.

It wasn't right. He was supposed to be up and moving, skating around the house or tapping away on the table, content with its own nonexistent beat regardless of the irritation it always caused everyone else. He was to supposed to be sporting that same carefree smile he wore like he was oblivious to all of the world's suffering. He was supposed to be fine. That's the kind of guy he was, always putting the needs of others before his own, hiding his own pain in exchange for bringing a smile to someone's face.

That empty shell in front of them couldn't be her brother.

And yet, somehow, it was.

It was a feeling all too fresh, all too familiar.

 _She inhaled sharply before she could manage to bite her tongue back. Jesus lied motionless in front of her, his face a study in pain. Deep hues of purples and rich blacks oozed along every inch of his normally smooth skin. His chin was_ a _beard of cuts and blisters bubbling with little red droplets of blood._

 _His eye seemed to have taken the brunt of the impact, though. It was sealed shut beyond the natural state of sleep. Bulging masses of swelling seemed to be weighing down on his eyelid, leaving him with a slightly sunken, uneven appearance_.

 _Despite all this, and perhaps it was simply a testimony to the powers of morphine, he somehow seemed at peace, far off in a land unbeknownst to_

 _the others as he wore off the lasting effects of his slumber._

 _However, just as she was relaxing and accepting that maybe he would actually be okay, his features distorted in pain as his lips parted, an unearthly groan emitting from them._

 _Alas, his eyes- or rather, eye, as the other was still caked shut- begin to flutter, adjusting to the harsh lights that the living submerged themselve_ s in, _before he finally managed_ to open them.

Present Day:

She rushed forwards, pushing past her family who were perhaps trapped in the same treacherous memory as she had been in, and planted her feet as close to his hospital bed as possible, holding on to his hand tightly.

Feelings aside, her twin needed her right now, and she would wait here for as long as it took for him to finally wake up.

Forty-six minutes.

Forty six long, endless minutes of making small chit chat with Callie over things they'd forgotten about minutes later, of rubbing soothing circles on his hand, of pleading to the void for him to just open his eyes, so he could laugh at how silly they were all being for acting so worried.

But finally, the repetitive, steady humming of the heart monitor began to hiccup in a violent vibrato. All the conversations in the room clammed up, the sound dispersing as if everyone's voices had been sucked into silence.

Jesus was waking up.

Lena and Stef were at his side at the speed of light, the latter leaning in close, the former gently clutching on to her from behind.

Mariana watched with laser focus, her eyes absorbing his every twitch and spasm as he clawed his way out of the morphine induced grogginess. Her heart was pounding with the ferociousness of a starved animal yearning food as she yearned to just hear his voice once more.

Finally, finally, his eyes opened with an onset of rapid blinking, giving a doe like aura. Almost as if their inner thoughts were connected, everyone seemed to step forward at once, each desperately needing him to say he's okay.

"Hey, baby, how're you feeling," Stef said, fingers brushing gently through the mop of curls on his head.

Jesus blinked at them. Once, twice, before opening his mouth as if he wanted to say something. "Arrrrrrrruuhhhhh."

He startled, looking around frantically like it had been someone else who had made that ghastly noise.

"Arrrrrruuuuuhh."

His heart rate rocketed, each failed attempt to elicit words sending him spiraling down further a path of pure panic.

Mariana saw his eyes grow saucer like with fear at the same time as her own, some sort of unspoken horror seeming to dawn upon them both.

Doctors rushed in.

Something was wrong.

Something was very, very wrong.

"What the hell is wrong with my son?!"

 _"What the hell is wrong with me?" Jesus groaned, pushing himself up on the bed and staring widely at everyone gathered around his bed._

 _Mariana could feel herself deflate with relief like a balloon at the brink of its popping point finally being let okay. He sounded okay._

 _Around the room, the feeling was clearly mutual._

 _"You were," Lena paused for a moment, as if trying to collect the right words to say. After a moment, she continued, "You, Mariana, and Ana were in a pretty bad wreck. Mariana and Ana and the baby are fine. You broke your orbital socket. They're- they're going to do surgery on it in a few days, after the swelling goes down a bit."_

Mariana squeezed his hand, unsure of what sort of reaction he was going to have to all this information being thrown at him less than five minutes after waking up.

 _But, in typical Jesus fashion, he shocked them all by laughing. "What, that's it? Just a broken eye socket? Hell, you're lucky it's me in this hospital bed instead of you, Mariana, because I don't know if I'd even bother coming to visit you over something so minor!" He smiled good naturedly before wincing, and then trying to hide his grimace by acting if he was just adjusting his position._

 _Mariana knew that his comment wasn't true, and that had their roles been reversed, he'd be just as, if not more wracked up as she had been. Regardless, she_ knew that his efforts to brush off his poorly concealed pain were for her sake probably more than anyone else's.

 _But if he was going to put in the effort, so would she_.

 _Scoffing, she flipped her hair dramatically behind her shoulders and flicked his hand, earning a melodramatic "ow!" from him. "Yeah, sure. But if you think this look on you is going to help you score a date, you're in for a rude awakening. You look like a chewed up slab of meat. Look on the bright side! At least it distracts from your unibrow."_

 _They met each other's eyes, equal looks of relief and not quite yet shed fears reflected in the stears. He smiled, to the best of his abilities, at her._

 _And with that it was clear, he was fine. T_ hey _were going to be oka_ y.


End file.
